Tag Archives: IT Strategy

10 questions you should be asking about IT

I have to admit that I don’t often get excited about IT articles.  But, the recent article titled “The do-or-die questions boards should ask about technology” by Paul WIlmott, a director in McKinsey’s London office, had me at “Hello!” Now, granted, part of why I got so excited is because what Mr. Willmott writes is […]

Integrating IT

There is change in the air, and it’s not just spring time allergies.  Clients, prospects, and colleagues are all talking about technology again.  I have a theory about what is going on. Post Nicholas Karr’s famous diatribe, “Does IT Matter?” (Answer: Not really) executives across the spectrum of company size relegated IT to “plumbing” and […]

Be afraid… Be very afraid!

Once again the popular media is abuzz with stories of hacking.  Most recently the dating site eHarmony was hacked probably by the same perpetrators that hacked LinkedIn, the “corporate” social network, exposing six million user passwords. Six million! A few months earlier, SONY, the one and only, was hacked twice.  The first incident, which they […]

The joy of being ignorant!

On March 12, Mr. Caleb Garling posted on WIRED an article titled “Study Says Most IT Guys Are Ignorant” followed by the opening line:  “Why can’t the IT guy fix your latest problem?  Odds are he’s ignorant.”  All this, according to Mr. Garling, based on CompTIA’s report of over 500 U.S. business and IT Managers. […]

Think Globally, Act Locally

In an age where no one thinks twice about jumping on a plane and a few hours later doing business two continents over, you would think that we would have figured out a way to make cell phones to a) work any place on the planet, and b) how not to take out a second […]

Analyze This!

The conference room was modest but very functional – a rarity these days!  The two teams had amassed on either side, cordial, eager to complete the deal.  We were there representing the buyer.  The teams were divided into “operations,” “finance,” and “IT.”  Everyone had six weeks to complete all the analysis, and land gracefully into […]

IT’s worst enemies?

Sometimes, it’s the Technologists! Here we are sitting around an impressive conference table at the plush headquarters of a multinational manufacturing company (names have been changed, of course, to protect the guilty) when their chief technology guy proclaims: “I want to make clear one thing from the start.  Our mandate:  Zero Impact to the Business!” […]

Innovate or else…

Under the dubious title of “Companies Are Erecting In-House Social Networks” Verne Kopytoff of The New York Times writes: “It’s one more instance of how consumer technology trends, like the use of tablet computers, are crossing into office life. Because of Facebook, most people are already comfortable with the idea of “following” their colleagues. But […]

Dreaming of True North

I was having a conversation with a client who, like many of us, is fighting a war on two fronts. First, he is fighting a war of business survival.  Day in, day out, he needs to figure out how to position his business for tomorrow; he must try to predict what the markets will do, […]

Heavy Clouds But No Rain

I was torn about the title of this entry.  Should it be Sting’s “Heavy Clouds But No Rain” or should it be Peter Allen’s and Carole Bayer Sager’s “Everything Old Is New Again?”  I settled on the former.  But either would work, as we’ll see! The New York Times published no less than three very […]